nacho carbonell creates collectible pieces that span the fields of art and design showcasing his limited edition designs in galleries, museums and design fairs all over the world. the artist's main goals are to question conventional ideas of product design, escaping trends, exploring tensions between design and art, form and function, nature and culture.

nacho carbonell: playground closes at dusk

the outdoor installation consists of five pieces that investigate the undefined connections between our senses and surrounding environment. four of the objects explore the world of senses, while the largest one represents memory, the capacity of the human brain to remember details, feelings and sensations, and to store them. named ‘auditorium’, ‘memoralia’, ‘point of view’, ‘odor’ and ‘resonator’, each of the pieces are meant to be smelled, touched, climbed and heard. they offer a sensorial experience in which the observer co-participates, plays and interacts with the parts, becoming not just a simple user of the playground, but also an entity to analyze in the whole context, made up of ladders, metal cones and emotional details which speak of the evocative and unequivocal names they are given.

‘playground closes at dusk’ at design miami / basel 2011

‘point of view’

‘resonator’

detail of ‘resonator’ and the layers of square metal elements which make up the cone-like structure

designer nacho carbonell with ‘memoralia’

‘memoralia’ is the largest piece of the collection. it can be considered a figurative explanation of the intricate relationships between the senses and our memory. these memories are not just emotions and visions, but their role is also the one of talking about people, telling their story, explaining the ‘why’ of their living. the cluster of boxes that sit at the top of the ladder structure represent these memories, creating as a whole a cloud, a storage room, a chamber of secrets like our brain. to climb and reach the top of the ladder is not considered only a physical effort, but can be interpreted as a psychological trip toward our deepest level of consciousness and our most hidden thoughts. therefore, climbing can be seen as an elevation process that conducts the user into a path of self-analysis. starting with the idea that individuals are the result of this collection of memories, we can consequently assume that reaching the top of the ladder will allow us to recognize a whole system of different ‘memory clouds’, all of different shapes, sometimes with some common content, that interact together defining what we call ‘the society’. the high view from atop the ladder also gives the viewer the possibility to see himself from a different perspective, both as an individual, and as part of a contamination process within a social community the result is a melting pot of emotional experiences that generate new visions and ideas.

nacho carbonell with ‘odor’

the playground pieces have been realized in collaboration with marc barrera, specialized in glass blowing, and barnabé fillion and borre akkersdijk, perfume designers.

It seems Nacho is moving fast towards ‘much to do about nothing’… A whole lot of words are written to describe works that don’t seem to live up to them. Making large scaled rust-monsters seem to be taking his work a step further into rediculous. Please… take a step back from this vanity project and use your talent wiser…

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